


Make my messes matter. Make this chaos count.

by Side_effect_of_the_meds



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Dadmack, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Side_effect_of_the_meds/pseuds/Side_effect_of_the_meds
Summary: Ok but I’ve always wondered about the missing scene in TKM where Wymack and Andrew go to get lunch for the team after the whole Aaron-Allison-Andrew debacle. Care to ellaborate?Yes. Yes, I would. (I tried to keep it in character but the whole checkout scene is incredibly self-indulgent but I refuse to be sorry about it.)
Relationships: Aaron Minyard & Andrew Minyard, Andrew Minyard & David Wymack, Betsy Dobson & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick & Andrew Minyard
Comments: 8
Kudos: 199





	Make my messes matter. Make this chaos count.

Wymack let his head fall back against the headrest with a sigh. He’d had enough of being a coach for the day. _God, I need a drink,_ he thought to himself as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. There would be no drinks left to have in his cabinet now that Andrew was back. A thousand times he’d threatened to put a lock on those doors. All of those threats had been empty until now. The sound of the passenger door brought him back from his musings of despair. 

“Put your seatbelt on,” Wymack said without sparing a glance at the demon. 

“Just let me die,” Andrew replied. 

“Look here, you little shit, I’m already going to get in trouble for letting a toddler sit in the front seat. What’ll the cops say if you’re not even wearing a belt?” 

“One of these days, I’m going to slit your throat,” Andrew snarled before tugging his seatbelt on. Cutting the engine on, Wymack turned the radio up before pulling out of the lot. Dolly Parton blared over the speakers, drowning out the silence that would have settled over the two of them. 

Wymack hated country music. No sane person didn’t. Of course, saying that raised the question: was Andrew Minyard sane? By Wymack’s criteria, certainly not. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the little monster’s head bobbed almost imperceptibly along to Jolene. For the last two years, Wymack had been trying to figure out whether or not Andrew’s obsession with country music was part of his monstrous act or hinted at something deeply wrong with him. 

“What do you want for lunch?” Wymack asked, turning down the radio. 

“Golden Dragon is good,” Andrew answered. Wymack did his best to stifle his surprise. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected an answer from Andrew when he was in a mood like this. 

“Golden Dragon is expensive.” 

“Charge it to the university. We’re putting our lives on the line every time we step on that court. We deserve to be expensive.”

“Is that what you tell yourself when you blow a hundred bucks on ice cream a month?” A ghost of a smile passed over Andrew’s face. It was hard for Wymack to keep a matching one off his own. Every time Andrew smiled, Wymack felt as though he’d gotten a few years of his life back. Pulling into a parking space, he shut off the engine and got out of the truck. Behind him, he heard the sound of Andrew dragging his feet on the asphalt. “Stop ruining the soles on those shoes.” 

“Ruining souls is all I’m good for,” Andrew replied. 

“I know you haven’t outgrown your My Chemical Romance phase but do me a favor and turn down the teen angst,” Wymack shot back as he held the door open for Andrew. Rage flared up in Andrew’s hazel eyes. Calloused by innumerable burns from Andrew’s first year at Palmetto, Wymack didn’t flinch beneath the weight of his scowl. Instead, he found himself marveling at how much anger could be contained in such a small body. 

It would have done Andrew good to watch where he was going. Too absorbed in his sordid attempt to appear menacing, he walked right into the doorframe. Laughter erupted from Wymack at the stunned look on Andrew’s face. Doubling over in a fit of laughter, Wymack struggled to catch his breath to no avail. Every time he shut his eyes, Wymack saw an instant replay on the backs of his lids. Tears poured down his face, now red and ruddy from laughter. It wasn’t until his sides began to ache that he finally managed to regain control of himself. 

“Andrew,” he called as he stepped into the restaurant, fighting to fend off his smile. “Are you alright?” Once more, Andrew turned a menacing glare on Wymack. Once more, Wymack erupted into laughter. 

“It wasn’t that funny,” Andrew hissed. Dragging out one of the stools by the window, he scrambled up into it. With the sun illuminating his face, Wymack finally noticed Andrew’s ears. Neither of the twins blushed with their faces. Instead, their ears burned bright enough to guide Santa’s sleigh. With how brightly they burned now, Wymack wouldn’t have been surprised if satellites could pinpoint Andrew’s location. Leaving him to sulk by the window, Wymack went to order the team’s lunch. 

“And a cup of ice,” he added. The girl on the counter smiled wide. Surely she’d seen Andrew’s little collision. “We’ll be back in a bit.” With that, Wymack swiped his card and snagged the cup. “Let’s go, Minyard.” He waited patiently while Andrew willfully dragged his shoes across the floor. “Ice the bruise or I’ll tell everyone what happened.” For once, Andrew did what he was told without complaint. 

At the far end of the strip mall stood a Walmart. Wymack started down towards it. The wind picked up and the cold bit at his face. Unlike Andrew, Wymack had forgotten his jacket back at the court. There was nothing he could do but forge ahead. It was going to be a long walk. Now was as good a time to talk as any. 

“About what happened with Allison-” 

“Why the fuck am I always the one that gets lectured?” Andrew snapped. Wymack turned to see that Andrew had stopped walking. His shoulders had tensed, bracing for a fight that would never come. 

“What part of that was a lecture?” Wymack asked sharply. Andrew opened his mouth and shut it again. A slight furrow appeared between his brows. It took every ounce of Wymack’s self-control not to reach over and rub it out the way his mother had done to him once. “I didn’t drag you out here to tell you off. I just thought you’d want to get out of there for a bit.” Wymack watched as Andrew shrunk back just a little into the hood of his hoodie. Shame wasn’t an emotion Andrew was accustomed to and it definitely didn’t look good on him. Nothing hurt Wymack more than seeing one of the Foxes hurting. “Andrew-” But he was already moving. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said. Wymack let Andrew shoulder past him before following him down the sidewalk. There were so many things Wymack wanted to say, none of which could fix this. He wanted to apologize for the upperclassmen and for letting Neil leave. He wanted to ask him about Drake and Easthaven or, at the very least, make a joke just to see Andrew’s half-smile but the words caught in his throat. Choking them back down, they made it down the strip in silence. At the entrance, Andrew grabbed a cart. Bracing it against a wall, he hopped into it.

“You’re really going to make an old man push you around in a cart?,” Wymack asked. Andrew turned a blank look on him, daring him to leave him there. “Selfish fatass,” Wymack muttered. That didn’t stop him from pushing the cart into the store with the little monster curled up in the basket. 

Liquor sales were banned in grocery stores in South Carolina. Beer and wine, however, were free game. Heading to the back of the store, Wymack made a mental note to stop by the liquor store on his way home from practice. He piled a few cases of beer into the cart atop Andrew, who’d pulled up his hood and was pretending to sleep before he headed to the hardware section. Too many times Wymack had come home to find his liquor cabinet had been ransacked. There were exactly three culprits, one of which was now napping in the cart. 

It didn’t take Wymack long to find a lock that would fit. It was a small silver thing that opened with a pair of keys. Picking it would be easy for someone like Andrew but he wasn’t likely to put in the effort unless he was truly desperate. Wymack maneuvered the cart down to the self-checkout. The second he waved the scanner over the beer cases, the screen prompted a sales associate to check for ID. When the young man came over asking his age, Wymack leveled a stare at him. 

“Fifteen,” he replied, deadpan. The kid blushed furiously, punching in the required pin. For half a second, Wymack felt bad. He’d only been doing his job. 

“He was also asking stupid questions,” Andrew piped up from the basket. His apparent ability to always know exactly what Wymack was thinking continued to irk him. 

“What a wonderful insight. You’ve been so helpful today,” he said sarcastically. 

“What would you ever do without me?” he asked, pushing his hood back. 

“Enjoy my own liquor,” Wymack snapped. The corners of Andrew’s mouth curled up into his little half-smile. Mirth sparkled in his hazel eyes. This was the happiest Wymack had ever seen him. Without thinking he passed the handheld scanner over Andrew’s face. “Well, won’t you look at that? It appears your smile is priceless.” Both men froze. Wymack watched as the smile fell off Andrew’s face. Surprise was another emotion he didn’t see often on Andrew’s face. Wymack recovered from the shock of his own words first. He turned his attention back to the screen, swiping his card through the reader. 

It took several tries for Andrew to find his voice. When he did, he said the most predictable thing. “Fuck. You.” 

“Didn’t I buy you a thesaurus for your birthday last year?” 

“Didn’t I fling it back at you?” Biting back a smile, Wymack pushed the cart out of the store, heading back the way they’d come. They dropped the cases into the cab of the truck before returning to grab the team’s lunch. On the way home, Kenny Chesney blared. It wasn’t until they pulled up at a red light that Wymack realized that he was bobbing along with it. The light changed and he floored it, focusing the entirety of his attention back on the road.

Back at the court, the team had assembled in the lounge. Wymack handed the food over before disappearing into his office with a case of beer. He’d had enough of being a coach for the day. 

~~~

Practice was no worse than usual. Some part of Wymack was tempted to call that a blessing in itself. Without any more outbursts from either side of the aisle, the upperclassmen seemed content with radiating animosity while Andrew stood there and took it. Even after dealing with this shit for the last year and a half, Wymack’s couldn’t stop the stabbing pain in his chest. 

Wymack had founded the Foxhole Court to be a safe place. Countless times, he’d told the team that he couldn’t protect them outside the walls of the court. It seemed he couldn’t protect them within them either. All his life Andrew had been surrounded by violence. The fact that the court wasn’t a place for him to escape it felt like a failure on Wymack’s part. 

It wasn’t very often but, sometimes, Wymack couldn’t wait for Dan to leave. With her and her prejudices out of the way, there was a good chance that Matt would find a friend in Andrew. It would take three months tops for him to see the good in Andrew. There was a chance that he wouldn’t even have to dig too deep. Neil had an uncanny ability to draw the best parts of people to the surface. As Matt’s best friend and Andrew’s… not boyfriend, Neil would undoubtedly draw the two together. Wymack knew, in time, Matt would manage to change Dan’s mind about the little monster too. 

There was a nice thought: all of Wymack’s foxes getting along. It was also nothing more than a pipe dream. Even so, Wymack let himself believe that maybe he and his foxes might just get to have one nice thing. _A family,_ Wymack thought as he locked up the court. Family wasn’t easy, he knew that but it shouldn’t be **this** hard.

He made his way through the parking lot, empty save for the campus police car. The drive home passed in a blur of crooning cowboys and headlights. It wasn’t until he’d parked that he realized that he’d forgotten to drop by the liquor store. It didn’t matter. Last he’d checked there was at least one bottle of whiskey left in his cabinet. Scrubbing a hand over his face, Wymack made his way up the stairs. Between the chaos of the court and the shrill sounds of shitty country singers, it was a miracle that Wymack managed to maintain even a shred of his sanity. That miracle’s name was Jack Daniels. 

That miracle was also already in the hands of the world’s shortest demon. Often Wymack wondered what the hell he’d done in his past life to deserve Andrew Minyard. 

“What the fuck did I say to you in the store?” he exploded, storming into the living room. “Not enough I work my ass off coaching you little shits, you come in here and ransack my liquor cabinet too? That was my last bo-” Wymack stopped short when he caught sight of his cabinet. It was anything but empty. In fact, it was fuller than he’d ever kept it. 

“Since you keep bitching at me about racking up the bill on the p-cards I paid for it out of pocket,” Andrew said as he stood. Striding past him, bottle in hand, he called over his shoulder, “Make no mistake, Coach, I only stocked it so that Nicky wouldn’t get to it before I did.”

 _Bullshit,_ Wymack thought as he heard the door shut behind him. Forged in the fires of his foster families’ contempt and sharpened by years of abuse, Andrew was all hard lines and sharp edges. Nicky often likened his cousin to a double-edged sword, equally dangerous to the wielder as to the target. Therein lay the problem. Even to his own family, Andrew was nothing more than a weapon, devoid of all emotion. 

Today’s outburst had effectively proved otherwise. A thousand emotions simmered beneath the surface of Andrew’s apathetic facade. Most people saw flashes of irritation and anger but there were positive ones too. Flickers of things like pride, joy, and even love sometimes managed to slip through the cracks of Andrew’s mask. 

Love wasn’t something Andrew knew how to feel but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it at all. Every deal, every promise Andrew made was just his own twisted version of it. There weren’t many people Andrew loved but those he did, he loved wholeheartedly. His heart might have been small and twisted and rotted but it was theirs. It was Aaron’s and Nicky’s and Kevin’s and Neil’s. Hell, it was probably Bee’s too. Andrew was neither a weapon nor a monster. 

_He’s just a kid_ , Wymack thought as he threaded the lock into the latch on his liquor cabinet. Snapping it shut, he tested out the key and its duplicate. They worked. Of course, they did. With a sigh, he took one of them off the ring. Andrew wasn’t just a kid. He was one of Wymack’s kids. 

A few days later, Wymack came home to find Andrew lounging on the couch with a glass of Martell and the liquor cabinet wide open. Grabbing the spare key from beneath a bowl, he tossed it at Andrew who caught it easily. 

“You know I don’t go to the court without one of the junkies,” he said. 

“It’s for the liquor cabinet, you ass.” 

“I don’t need it,” Andrew said, motioning to the open cabinet.

“I know,” Wymack replied. He didn’t miss the emotions flickering in Andrew’s eyes. What exactly they were, Wymack couldn’t say. 

Keys wouldn’t mean much to any of the other Foxes, save Neil. Keys were a sign of trust and explicit permission to be somewhere. Trust didn’t come easily to people like Andrew. It was the result of no one else ever giving him any. Wymack knew that no amount of his own trust would make up for everyone else’s lack of it but he hoped that maybe it might mean something to Andrew anyway. 

Dragging himself to his bedroom, Wymack let himself flop down onto his mattress. He’d finally taken Abby’s advice and gotten a new one. Without the multitude of springs digging into him from every imaginable angle, he was asleep in no time. 

He woke the next morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Just as he padded out of his room, he heard the front door slam closed. A glance at the clock told him it was five in the morning. It was rare to ever even see Andrew up before eight. Wymack wondered what the hell he’d done in his past life to deserve Andrew Minyard. 

He drank his coffee in the silence of his empty apartment. That was another thing Wymack would miss. Mornings with Andrew weren’t high energy. In fact, they were silent too but it was a different kind of quiet. Andrew’s silent drifting presence was an odd source of comfort to Wymack. _Only because it means he’s not out there causing trouble,_ Wymack told himself. 

“You are a liar of the most blatant kind,” he heard Andrew saying in his head. Deep down, he knew he was right. It wasn’t just the fact that Andrew wasn’t causing trouble that eased Wymack’s mind. It was knowing that no one was causing him any trouble either. Countless times Abby had asked Wymack to move in with her. He’d turned her down every time and he’d keep doing so until the day Andrew left. The court wasn’t a safe place for Andrew the way it was to everyone else but this dingy little apartment was. 

An hour later, Wymack jogging down the staircase. In his hurry to get home last night, he’d forgotten several files in his office. Tugging the door open, he got into the cab of his truck. When he cut the engine on, the radio sputtered to life with it. For once, his immediate thought wasn’t to shut it off. Maybe county music wasn’t that bad. _Or maybe you’re just as crazy as Andrew_. Either way, he didn’t care. A ghost of a smile passed over his face as he drove down to the court, bobbing along to Lee Brice. 


End file.
